The latest controversial ruling in Europe has Google deliberating if it would flag up censored search results of information of people who invoked their “right to be forgotten.”
The “right to be forgotten” provides Internet users in Europe the advantage to demand the erasure, removal or deletion of sensitive personal information in Google’s online search queries.
“A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union found that certain users can ask search engines to remove results for queries that include their name where those results are inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed,” Google confirms in its Support page.
Research shows the issue stemmed from a 2010 complaint of a Spanish national named Mario Costeja Gonzalez who requested Google to remove the links of two newspapers stories about him, of a real-estate auction in 1998 meant to pay his social security debts that always appear prominently in searches. The same court upheld his complaint early this month.
With the new ruling, Google plans to put an alert or a disclosure at the bottom of each search page where it made the deletion or removal of the links. Yet in implementing the court decision, each request will undergo assessment to ensure that there is balance between implementing the privacy rights of the requesting individual and the public’s right for information.
“When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there’s a public interest in the information—for example, information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials,” Google says.
Critics, in fact, are divided on the ruling. While others initially think it’s a good move to protect user privacy, some believe otherwise, underscoring the possible notion of such “right to be forgotten” as an approach to online censorship.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, for instance, is concerned over the recent European court ruling saying news organizations are particularly affected because Google has become the primary source of information of Internet users. It also called the court ruling as censorship.
"I think the decision will have no impact on people's right to privacy, because I don't regard truthful information in court records published by court order in a newspaper to be private information,” Wales said.
“There is no ‘right to be forgotten’ – there is apparently a ‘right’ in Europe to censor some information that you don’t like,” he adds.
Since the court ruling, research says Google already received over 40,000 removal requests involving scams or frauds, child pornography arrests and a politician with a dark past, among others. Removal of sensitive information may take days to weeks, however – not everything will be removed.
A trusted source of Search Engine Land claims only requests that are complete and reasonable as assessed by the search engine company will stand a good chance for deletion or removal. Whether the request is denied or not, Google will still notify the requesting party though.
Google prepared an initial form to be filled up by the requesting individual for removal requests. It also plans to work closely with data protection authorities and other relevant parties in the next months as it refines the approach on the “right to be forgotten” European court ruling.
